Red Winter by Dan Smith

Final Rating: 3.8/5

   Red Winter is a clever blending of Slavic Folklore with the horrors of war and oppression. An entertaining suspenseful read that gallops onward page after page and hardly allows those to catch their breath before another action packed scene charges the reader’s vivid imagination. Set in 1920 Russia the reader is immediately introduced to the ghosts that haunt our narrator’s mind. Returning from the blood soaked fields and passage of battle, all Kolya desires is his family and the comforting sounds of civilian life. Sick from the images and realizations of war he returns only to find his village eerily silent and his home empty. It is only when the bone-chilling night falls that Kolya begins to suspect the silent woods beyond the village may hold more secrets than answers to the mystery of the disappearance of the inhabitants of Belev and that folk tale monsters may be real…

   In the end, this was an entertaining thriller that mixed atmosphere with action and pulled the tale of Koschei, The Deathless into a mystery that had this reader sneaking away from real life to her kindle at any available opportunity. The dramatic styling of The Child Thief (another novel by Mr. Smith) continues in Red Winter. Whereas the reader was entranced with the grisly collaboration of a kidnapping, the consequences of unleashed paranoia and the tale of Baba Yaga in The Child Thief; Red Winter takes on the realizations and horrors of war, the limits of a father’s and husband’s love with the tale of Koschei, The Deathless. Set in similar time periods and the snow howls and screams across the pages in both, Red Winter is completely different than The Child Thief. Different in many positive ways but still the disappointing negatives I found with The Child Thief were again found in Red Winter mainly predictability, repetitive actions or thoughts and a lackluster ending. Still I eagerly look forward to sneaking away from real life and joining another journey into the snow encrusted pages with another cleverly blended tale of Eastern Europe and Slavic Folklore from Mr. Smith.

* I would like to thank Pegasus publishing and Edelweiss for the opportunity to read and enjoy Red Winter